


Natural Reservations

by gelowo93



Series: Beginnings are the Hardest [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 07:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelowo93/pseuds/gelowo93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teddy is at work when he doesn't expect Victoire to show up, and when one of his colleagues starts interfering in his love life, he knows it's time to do something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natural Reservations

Teddy wiped the sweat from his brow with the hand he wasn’t writing with. It didn’t help to relieve the uncomfortable feeling of sweat running down his face, though; he had repeatedly done the same thing for the past hour, and the back of his hand was just as soaked as the rest of him.

 

Pausing in his writing, Teddy grabbed the nearby goblet on his desk and drained it.

 

The day had turned from yet another cloudy summer day, to being unexpectedly sunny. On any other day, Teddy wouldn’t have minded, but it was a Friday, and, as Teddy usually left all his paperwork to be done at the end of the week, he was stuck inside in the boiling office that had only one window that opened, and which wasn’t letting enough of a breeze in to cool the room down.

 

Thinking about it, Teddy was glad that a proper breeze couldn’t get into his office – and by ‘his’ office, he meant his supervisor’s office that they had squeezed an extra desk in for Teddy when he joined. Whereas Cassidy’s desk was tidy, with all her paperwork put away in drawers, and anything on top was secured down with paperweights according to how important they were, Teddy had piles and piles of parchment that would blow away in even the slightest of winds. In contrast, the drawers in his desk were perfectly tidy, although, that was due to the fact that Teddy forgot to put anything in them, and when he did, it was as good as lost to him because he just never checked his desk drawers when he was looking for something. Teddy would have believed that Cassidy had only started her organisation system since he had started work in the hopes that it would influence him to be more organised, only, everyone else seemed to understand it, and understanding Cassidy’s organisation system was an essential skill for anyone who worked at the Reservation. Fortunately, Teddy had picked up on it quickly, he just hadn’t replicated it.

 

Teddy scratched his head with his quill – the lime-green fwooper feather quill that Victoire had bought him for Christmas – and stared down at his evaluation form. He hated evaluating himself - if he knew how he could have done something better, then he’d have done it better in the first place - but the monthly evaluations were necessary for him to complete his year as an assistant, and if Teddy wanted to be kept on at the end of his year, then he had to meet a certain standard, and that meant doing them well and on time.

 

So, instead, Teddy let his mind wander. He looked around the room, looking for something to distract himself with, and his eyes eventually fell on his own brightly coloured quill.

 

Smiling, Teddy twirled it around in his hand. Of course Victoire couldn’t have bought him a normal quill, that wouldn’t have been conspicuous enough. He supposed it was sort of his own fault, though, for spending the majority of his childhood with brightly coloured hair in some hue or another. That had been his _thing_ , and now he was older, other people didn’t seem to think that he’d grown out of it. He’d mentioned that to Victoire once, and since then she had done her best to bring it up at every opportunity.

 

Thinking of Victoire reminded Teddy of the letter he had received that morning from her. He hadn’t had the time to read it, having been late to work as it was, and all he’d seen was her handwriting on the envelope, before he’d headed out the door and disapparated.

 

Teddy had kept his promise to keep in touch that he’d made at Christmas, and since then the only time he hadn’t wrote to Victoire at least twice a week was when she had been taking her exams, as she had been too busy to reply. He was secretly surprised that they had carried on communicating like this now that she was at home, but perhaps he shouldn’t be, because, so far, they hadn’t managed to see each other face to face in the month that Victoire had been back from school. Teddy had been busy at work, but it sounded as if Victoire had become in high demand in the past few months, with her constantly already having plans whenever Teddy suggested they meet up on his days off.

 

The thought made Teddy’s stomach squirm, but he ignored it. It wasn’t as if he was expecting anything from his renewed friendship with Victoire, and was getting jealous that she might be spending time with other boys that may or may not have a crush on her, or that he was vehemently refusing to go on a date with any girl that Garrett tried to set him up with, or that he always somehow managed to dodge the question whenever a relative or family friend asked him why he didn’t have a girlfriend (he could hardly tell them that he turned down a girl that he kind-of-sort-of liked because she went about it the wrong way, but he was still talking to her to see whether they could work it out.)

 

Teddy shook his head, trying to get his mind to focus on his evaluation again. He checked his watch – it had been fifteen minutes since he’d last set quill to parchment.

 

He was about to dip his quill in the ink and start writing again when the door opened.

 

“Still writing that evaluation, Teddy?” asked Cassidy, and Teddy turned around in his seat to see her properly. “You haven’t finished yet?”

 

She had popped her head through the door, making it look as if it was levitating of its own accord. Her long black hair was swept up in a ponytail that had been immaculate that morning, but now a few random wisps of it had come out and were pushed behind her ears. Cassidy’s dark brown eyes, that matched her skin tone, twinkled, almost as if she knew that Teddy wouldn’t be finished with his evaluation yet.

 

“Nearly,” Teddy said, flipping through it and realising that he still had three pages left. He winced internally.

 

“It doesn’t matter anyway, I want you to help me with a job. You can take that home to finish and owl it to me over the weekend.”

 

Cassidy opened the door wider, letting a gentle breeze into the room. Teddy sighed in relief as the cool air washed over him, and he hurriedly packed up the desk, making a pile of parchment that he had yet to finish.

 

“What do you want me to do?” Teddy asked, following Cassidy along the corridor and down the stairs, towards the visitor’s centre section of the building.

 

“I found some Snargaluff trees in with the rowan that I want to get rid of as soon as possible, and I thought you’d rather do that than sit in that cave for the rest of the afternoon.”

 

Teddy had to suppress a groan. Yes, he was grateful that Cassidy had thought to get him outside on a day like this, but uprooting saplings was tiring work that wasn’t made to be done when the heat made doing much more than _breathing_ tiring.

 

“I won’t make you do it all on your own,” Cassidy seemed to have caught onto Teddy’s thoughts, “that would take you all weekend. I’ll get Aida to help you with it.”

 

Aida was the other intern, who always did her paperwork during the week and never left it until the last minute, and therefore didn’t spend her Friday afternoons cooped up in a small room. She was a year older than Teddy, having taken a year out after graduating from Hogwarts to volunteer at conservation reserves all over the world, an experience that Teddy was immensely jealous of, but it had also caused him to be slightly intimidated of Aida at first. Now, she was just a friend and would talk to her just like anyone else, but, initially, the fact that she had seemed to know _everything_ had made Teddy wary of approaching her, because there was no way anything he could say would interest her. That barrier had quickly come down when Aida had found out that Teddy was a metamorphmagus – apparently she had never come across one on her travels – and she had bombarded him with questions. As stupid as it sounded, that experience with her had mollified Teddy, and made it clear that Aida didn’t know everything, making Teddy feel more comfortable around her.

 

They reached the reception area of the centre, and promptly ran into Aida, who was just returning from a guided tour with a handful of visitors. She smiled and waved hello to Teddy.

 

“Madoc!” Cassidy called over the chatter of the tourists. “Do you need Aida for the next tour? I want to borrow her.”

 

Madoc – Aida’s supervisor – shook his head. “She’s all yours for the rest of the afternoon, as long as she doesn’t mind.”

 

“What do you want me for?” Aida said walking over to where he and Cassidy were stood. “Hiya, Teddy.”

 

“We need to get rid of some Snargaluff trees. Are you up for it?” asked Cassidy.

 

Aida nodded, and then checked her pockets for her wand before saying “Yes.”

 

Cassidy led them out of the visitor’s centre and along the footpath that the tours followed, and the three of them made idle chatter on their way; asking their plans for the weekend, whether they’d listened to a particular radio show the night before, if they’d heard that Celestina Warbeck was doing a comeback tour.

 

After they’d been walking for about ten minutes, Cassidy diverted from the path, and walked straight into the thick forest that they believed the snidgets were breeding in, and was therefore closed to the public. As they walked along this new, unmarked path, Teddy started noticing the unmistakable dead logs that were, in fact, Snargaluff trees.

 

“This will do.” Cassidy stopped walking at the centre of a clearing and turned to face Teddy and Aida. Teddy stopped looking around at the surrounding trees to pay attention. “The Snargaluff trees are invading the areas where we planted the rowan trees specifically for the snidgets to nest in, and, well, they’re Snargaluff trees, they aren’t very bird friendly. You two know what to do?” Teddy and Aida nodded; they’d both had practise doing this over the past year. “Excellent. Aida, you do the section we just walked through, Teddy, do the section to the right of Aida’s, and I’ll do go to the right of yours. When you’re finished, bring all the uprooted saplings back here and move onto the next section that hasn’t been cleared yet.”

 

Teddy and Aida nodded, and promptly set to work. It wasn’t long before Teddy had lost sight of Aida and Cassidy in the woods, and the only sounds were those of the trees Teddy had uprooted falling to the ground.

 

Half an hour later, Teddy had only just finished his first section of the woodland; there had been more Snargaluff saplings, and the work had been more tiring, than he had anticipated. He stood at the edge of the woods, next to the path, breathing deeply and giving himself a break before he would go back in, collecting the uprooted trees and taking them to the clearing they had stopped in before.

 

He had been standing there for just over a minute when there was the sound of someone walking through the thin layer of undergrowth. Teddy looked around to see Aida leaving the woods, the odd twig and stray leaf caught in her robes.

 

“Hey,” she said, not looking at Teddy, but instead brushing the leaves and twigs from her.

 

“Hey,” replied Teddy, silently grateful that he hadn’t been the last to finish their first section of the woods.

 

“Well, that was harder than I thought it would be.” Aida walked over to stand next to Teddy. “Remind me to be busy the next time Cassidy comes looking for me to do a job.”

 

“At least you had the chance to say no, try having her as your supervisor.” Teddy grinned. He didn’t really mind having Cassidy as his supervisor; she just had a habit of finding the most exhausting jobs for them to do. “I’ll switch you for Madoc.”

 

“No way, I’ve got my eyes on him.”

 

Teddy raised his eyebrows.

 

“What? He’s only a few years older than me, plus, he’s Welsh.”

 

“He’s your boss.”

 

Aida scrunched up her nose and frowned, as if that was a fact that she chose to forget.

 

“There’re ways around that.” She winked.

 

Teddy just shook his head, knowing that Aida most likely wasn’t being serious, or hoping so, at least.

 

“Come on,” he said, “we better get started again before Cassidy finds us and we find out she’s done the next dozen sections.”

 

Aida laughed, but her laugh was interrupted by someone shouting Teddy’s name.

 

Half wincing, Teddy turned around, expecting to see one of the senior staff having caught them having an unofficial break. His guilty expression immediately turned into one of surprise when he saw a small group of seventeen year olds walking towards them, and in the lead was a familiar person whose strawberry blonde hair was blowing around her in the wind.

 

“Hi,” said Teddy, when Victoire and her friends reached Aida and him. She smiled at him, her face lighting up, but Teddy thought he saw her give a quick questioning look to Aida. “What are you doing here?”

 

Victoire’s smile faded slightly. “You didn’t get my letter?”

 

“Sorry, yes, I got it this morning. I just didn’t have time to read it before work.” Teddy paused. “So, what are you doing here?”

 

“We decided we wanted to see each other during the holidays, and Jason suggested we come here for something to do.” Victoire vaguely gestured towards one of the boys behind her. “What are you two doing?”

 

“Getting rid of Snargaluff trees. Fancy helping?” Aida said, before Teddy could reply. He tried to catch her eye, to silently ask what she was doing, but she seemed determined to avoid eye contact with him.

 

Teddy was about to shoot down that idea as a bad idea, that Victoire and her friends wouldn’t want to do work on a day like this, when Cassidy emerged from the woods two sections away. Teddy stared, and he saw Aida staring too, and he wondered how she could have finished clearing so quickly as to have done three sections of the woods in the time it took him to do one. It didn’t surprise Teddy that Cassidy spotted the crowd, and walked over to see what was happening.

 

“Teddy, Aida, what’s going on?”

 

“Nothing,” Teddy said quickly. “Me and Aida got to the end of our sections, and were about to start again when Victoire came over to say hello.”

 

“They sounded interested in what we were doing so I asked to see if they wanted to help,” added Aida.

 

Teddy had no idea what Aida’s plan was; they weren’t supposed to let visitors help around the reserve, but, for some reason, Cassidy seemed to be considering it. She was eyeing up each of Victoire’s friends (they all managed not to squirm under her gaze, which Teddy was surprised at, considering it had taken him months to not do that) as if deciding whether they were trustworthy enough to help. At last, she turned to Teddy.

 

“You know them?”

 

“I know Victoire,” corrected Teddy. “I thought we weren’t allowed to let visitors help…?”

 

“We aren’t, but I’m willing to make an exception because I want this done today. Are you all overage?”

 

The group of Victoire’s friends all nodded, and Cassidy took them to one side to explain what they had to do. While they were doing that, Teddy pulled Aida out of hearing range of the others.

 

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

 

“This is the same Victoire that you’ve been pining over for months, yeah?”

 

“I’ve not been pining over anyone!”

 

“It is, though, isn’t it?” Aida grinned wickedly. “I figured you needed someone to give you that little shove to get things started. Now, you’re going to get the chance to be alone with her without her entire family about to walk in on you.”

 

“Oh sure, now it’s just going to be my boss.”

 

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Aida said, then walked back towards the others, where Cassidy was pairing everyone up.

 

“Teddy! Get over here, you can work with your friend,” Cassidy shouted to him. Aida turned around to smirk at him, as Teddy walked towards the small group gathered at the edge of the woods

 

After Cassidy finished explain what to do, and designated new sections of the woods for them to work on, they were allowed to get started. Teddy and Victoire walked in silence to the area they had been told to clear and set to work. Teddy was still silently seething that Aida had started interfering in his non-existent love life, and he guessed that Victoire had sensed his mood and was unwilling to potentially get shouted at.

 

“Are you okay, Teddy?” Victoire asked eventually, lowering her wand.

 

Teddy hadn’t realised that he had been holding his breath until he released it in a sigh.

 

“I’m fine. Aida’s being a nuisance.”

 

Teddy looked up in time to see Victoire smiling slightly.

 

“What’s she done?”

 

“Nothing really. Just interfering.”

 

Victoire raised her eyebrows at him, and Teddy knew that she wanted more of an explanation, but he didn’t want to give her one. He didn’t really know how to have this conversation with her.

 

She must have understood he didn’t want to talk about it, as she went back to attacking the nearest Snargaluff tree. Teddy watched Victoire work. She had tied her hair back after the first tree had got its vines caught in it, and her face was set in an expression of pure concentration.

 

As much as it pained Teddy to think it, Aida _was_ right. At the rate they’d been going, there wouldn’t be another time like this where it would be the two of them, with a very small chance that anyone would walk in on them having a private conversation. The problem was that he didn’t know what he wanted. Did he really want to start dating Victoire? He could already imagine the drama that that would create in her family, but why should that stop him? They weren’t actually related, it wasn’t that much of a big deal.

 

He watched Victoire work for a few more minutes, trying to ignore the squirming that his stomach was doing.

 

“What are you smiling at?” Victoire asked, glancing up at him.

 

Teddy hadn’t realised that a small grin had spread onto his face, and he quickly struggled to contain it.

 

“Nothing,” he said, going back to work. He could feel her eyes on him, but when he glanced up she had started working again, too, though Teddy thought he could see her frowning.

 

They carried on removing the snargaluff saplings for a while longer, and Teddy’s internal battle over whether or not he wanted to further his relationship with Victoire raged on. He stopped to rest after a few minutes, which was when he noticed Victoire struggling with one of the trees some distance away.

 

Teddy quietly made his way over to her. Victoire was doing the wand movements right, but the tree was remaining firmly in the ground. She wasn’t saying the incantation aloud, however, and Teddy thought that was probably the problem.

 

“Do you need some help?”

 

Victoire jumped at his voice, spinning round to look at Teddy.

 

“I can do it, I was just trying to practice non-verbal spells.” To prove her point, Victoire pointed her wand at the sapling, muttered “ _aufarabole_ ” and Teddy watched with wide eyes as the tree’s roots curled back up into the tree and it turned black and rotten before their eyes; even he couldn’t make them rot and he’d been doing it for the past year. Teddy was suddenly embarrassed by his half-formed plan of helping Victoire uproot the tree, and then… something. He wasn’t quite sure what he had expected to happen after that, but seeing as the first part had messed up, Teddy decided he would just have to put himself on the line.

 

“Um, Victoire?”

 

“Yes?” Victoire looked at him, smiling, if a little confused at his sudden nervousness.

 

“I was… er... you look nice,” Teddy said, instantly regretting it. What was he doing? _Abort! Abort mission! Nothing is worth putting yourself through this._ Victoire smiled wider at him.

 

“Thanks. Are you looking for a favour, or…?”

 

“Well – no! No, definitely not, I wouldn’t try to flatter you to make you do something for me. I just thought, well, I know we’ve been friends, but I thought you used to – I was wondering if you still – I think you’re brilliant, and stubborn, and I wanted to know if –” Teddy was waffling, he knew he was waffling, but he couldn’t stop the words coming out of his mouth, and he was thankful when Victoire interrupted him.

 

“Are you asking me out?”

 

“Only if you say yes?”

 

Victoire laughed. “You’re an idiot, it’s a good thing you’re cute.”

 

Teddy couldn’t help smiling a little at that. “Really?”

 

“Shut up before it goes to your head.”

 

“Right. Shutting up.” Teddy’s grin grew wider.

 

Rolling her eyes, Victoire turned away from Teddy and towards the next tree that needed uprooting, which confused Teddy. What had just happened? He thought something had just happened, but Victoire… unless she was messing with his head, which was a possibility.

 

He would have to choose the girl with whom nothing was ever simple.

 

With a sudden burst of confidence, Teddy took a few steps forward, and grabbed Victoire’s hand, spinning her round. She looked up at him with surprised eyes, and Teddy held her like that, almost chest to chest, but his hold on her hand weak. He looked back down at her, an eyebrow raised, and when she didn’t move away, Teddy slowly lowered his head until his lips met hers, and he was kissing her – softly, chastely – before he broke away a moment later.

 

Victoire took a step backwards, holding onto Teddy’s hand, and one side of her mouth tugging upwards in a smile. She let his hand slide out of her own as she stepped back again, and again.

 

“I’m free Wednesday evening, you can pick me up when you’ve finished work,” Victoire said. “We should really get back to doing this, though, don’t you think?”

 

Teddy watched as Victoire turned her back on him and walked away, and he couldn’t help the smile that stretched across his face at the thought of the following Wednesday.


End file.
